Do You Follow Instructions?

Do you follow instructions? I know I do.

The lovely inventor of Wendy's Story Timeline and I had a few days break in the Peak District. We had never stayed in that area before but as my daughter lives in Manchester, we thought it would be a good place to combine seeing her with a few days walking.

We stayed in Castleton - a chocolate boxy type of village which we immediately loved. Our first day saw us stepping out of our farmhouse B&B and walking 9 miles along the ridge of the peaks that surrounded the village.

The second day saw us hobbling up the slopes of a hill in the beautiful area around Dovedale (can you believe we spent an hour looking for the village of Dovedale in order to have a coffee before realising it wasn't a village just an area of dales).

Not being boy scouts or proficient with maps, we followed a walking guide which we'd found in the farmhouse. My husband read out the steps and I followed them dutifully.

Eventually he read the instruction Walk across the field where you will see a gate in a fence. Go through the gate...

So, liking to follow instructions to the letter, and not being able to bring myself just to walk around it, I did just that!

Whenever I do any writing or send anything for publication, I read the guidelines once, twice and then again to make sure. Why give magazines or competition judges reasons to throw your work to one side unnecessarily?

Maybe this is one reason why I came home to find some very happy emails.... five sales to three different magazines. I need to remember days like this when I next have to pull on that rejection T-shirt.

Wendy's Story Timeline - Version 2 with Date of Birth Calculator

*NEW VERSION*

For those of you not already familiar with Wendy's Story Timeline, let me explain (everyone else can skip this part!) A while ago, I was writing a short story set in the present day with flashbacks to WW1. In the story, it was important to know in what year a character might feasibly have married, had a baby, become a grandmother etc. I got into such a muddle (I tried to marry off my lead character when she would have been only eight!) so decided to draw myself a time line to work from. This was time consuming, scrappy and only usable for one story.

When I looked online, I could find timelines but nothing specific to my needs.

These were the things I wanted:

• My character's age to be automatically calculated against each year on the timeline..
• A column to show major events logged against each year
• A column where I could record events in my character's life
• A timeline that could cover any century
• A timeline that could be filled in for my story, saved and a new one started for the next

This was when I turned in desperation to my husband - who kindly dedicated an evening to creating the perfect timeline for writers.

To go to Wendy's Story Timeline Click here. It should be straightforward to use - after all it was made for me and I'm pretty useless at technology! I have filled in kings and queens and some major events but you can fill in events of your choice.

So what's new? Whilst using the timeline for one of my stories, I knew that I wanted my character to be age 18 at the beginning of WW1 (1914) but unless I used my fingers (I'm not too good at mental arithmetic) I had no idea in which year she would have been born in order to place her on my time line. 'I'll sort it,' said my husband and he set aside a Sunday to solve the problem for me (and you).

The new timeline now has an Date of Birth Calculator. See below for how to use it.

Once you have your character's date of birth, just add it to the timeline and - hey presto - you now have all the information you need.

What else is new? Well, this isn't a new feature, you just might not have realised you could use Wendy's Timeline for this purpose. Instead of putting in your character's date of birth, you can put in a life event such as marriage or date of ascension to the throne. The timeline will then calculate the number of years married or on the throne. This is a good way of finding out anniversary dates for your characters. See below for an example.

If Wendy's Story Timeline is new to you, below are simple instructions for how to use it.

If you have any problems or questions about using this timeline, please let me know and I will try and help. It is free to download, but could I just ask that if you do, please leave a comment and if you share on your blog please credit this blog or provide a link to it. Many thanks.

This timeline is absolutely FREE but if you feel you'd like to make a contribution to the hard work that's gone into it, there are a couple of rather lovely story collections on the sidebar that you might like to put on your kindle for the price of a cup of coffee. 

Happy planning!

The Timeline is now version 3. This has a slight change to make it easier to select a range of years to view. It also has more character columns.

To download Wendy's Story Timeline V3, Click here.

How to Self Publish - All You'll Ever Need to Know

What do I know about self publishing a novel? Absolutely zilch as it happens but I know someone who does.

Joanne Phillips has done it again! Not content with providing us with her brilliant Writing Magazine Index (which incidentally has reached the top 10 most viewed posts on my blog), she has produced a series of posts on her website on How to Self Publish.  It is so comprehensive that if you can't self publish a book after reading this then you probably never will!
 

 Joanne Phillips lives in Shropshire, England with her husband and young daughter. Since leaving school she’s worked as a hairdresser, an air hostess and a librarian, but now divides her time between writing novels and freelance indexing. She’s the author of commercial women’s fiction Can’t Live Without and The Family Trap, and the Flora Lively Investigates series of cozy mysteries. Can’t Live Without was an Amazon top 100 bestseller in 2012 and her books regularly appear on category bestseller lists.

Joanne's latest book Murder at the Maples will be launched on Thursday 12 September.

How many more useful resources can Joanne dream up, I wonder?

Stop Press *** Coming Soon - a useful addition to Wendy's Story Timeline ... watch this space

Bad Dog!

Readers of my blog will be familiar with my step-dog Bonnie. This is her on one of her favourite walks. She thinks she is such a good dog and from the photo, it looks as though butter wouldn't melt in her mouth.... Well, the inventor of Wendy's Story Timeline and I know better.

Let me set the scene. When my husband and I married in 2010, and Bonnie became step-sister to my cat Bobby, I was a little apprehensive about having a large dog who (despite having a hose down after walks) seemed to always have muddy feet. I decided to impose a rule:

No dogs on the settee! Yes that means you, Bonnie.

 

Clever dog, learnt the rule very quickly - or so we thought. In time, we came to learn that while we were in the room, she would sit in her basket or on the floor by our feet but when we went out or went to bed, we'd find evidence that she had been on the settee - a warm dent in the cushion and  doggie drool!

 

Not to be outdone, we came up with a cunning plan - we would barricade the settee with cheap plastic expandable trellis when we went out. Last Friday we stretched the trellis across the settee and feeling smug, went to our salsa masked ball . We came home to find our good dog asleep in her basket (or so we thought). The trellis was on the floor, and the cushion had a warm drooly dent in it but Bonnie appeared not to have moved.

 

 

 

 



So, not content with creating timelines, my husband decided to set a Bonnie Trap to see what really goes on while we are away. The following night we went to another dance. I wonder if you can guess what happened while we were out. I will post the youtube clip in the next post.  

 

 

We know you will enjoy it!

 

 

Resources for Wendy's Story Timeline and Masquerades





Below are some useful links which you can use with Wendy's Story Timeline.

         I hope you find these useful:

• For world history, disasters, sports, entertainment and more timelinesclick here

• For interactive British history timeline click here  and here

 

• For inventions timeline click here

 

• For WW1 timeline click here

 

• For WW2 timeline click here

 

• For major world events 20th Century timeline click here

 

• For kings and queens of England timeline click here

 
If you are wondering why there is a picture of a mask at the top of this post, it's because the inventor of the timeline and I are going to be salsa-ing the night away tonight at a masked ball at Eastbourne Town Hall.

Finally on further good note - another sale today to the lovely People's Friend!

A Big Thank You To Everyone

A big thank you to everyone who visited my blog and downloaded Wendy's Story Timeline. A special thank you also to Teresa and Patsy for mentioning it on their blogs and sending hundreds to view it! Thank you also for all your kind comments - if you use it for a story, please let me know how useful it was.

In the next post I shall be posting some links that I hope will be useful to use alongside the timeline.

I am feeling very Christmassy for various reasons:

• On Saturday, my choir, Cantatrice, had our Christmas concert in the local church. The building is beautiful and sun streamed through the stained glass windows as we sang a mix of carols and lighter Christmas songs - it doesn't get more Christmassy than that in my book.

• In the evening we had our ballroon Christmas dance. It was a lovely occasion - even though it was so full, we could only do the basic steps in each dance. We also had the chance to dance our Argentine Tango routine that we've been learning over the last few weeks - it was a bit scary as there were only three other couples dancing with us and everyone else watching.

• We booked tickets for a salsa Christmas masked ball . (I've decided my husband should wear a Simon Cowell mask!)

• We put up our Christmas tree.

• I had stories accepted by both Fiction Feast and The People's Friend (not Christmassy - but it made me happy).

Wendy's Story Timeline - Here it is!

 

* Click here for the latest version of the timeline *

 

 

 

 

First of all, let me explain. A while ago, I was writing a short story set in the present day with flashbacks to WW1. In the story, it was important to know in what year a character might feasibly have married, had a baby, become a grandmother etc. I got into such a muddle (I tried to marry off my lead character when she would have been only eight!) so decided to draw myself a time line to work from. This was time consuming, scrappy and only usable for one story.

When I looked online, I could find timelines but nothing specific to my needs.

These were the things I wanted:

• My character's age to be automatically calculated against each year on the timeline..
• A column to show major events logged against each year
• A column where I could record events in my character's life
• A timeline that could cover any century
• A timeline that could be filled in for my story, saved and a new one started for the next

This was when I turned in desperation to my husband - who kindly dedicated an evening to creating the perfect timeline for writers. I want to share this resource with other writers and would just ask that you leave a comment or give me a mention if you use it or share it.

To go to Wendy's Story Timeline Click here. You will then need to click file and download to use it. It should be straightforward to use - after all it was made for me and I'm pretty useless at technology! I have filled in kings and queens and some major events but you can fill in events of your choice.

Below are simple instructions for how to use it. (Note: The timeline will show from 1961 but you can open up the timeline to increase the range of years.)

If you have any problems or questions about using this timeline, please let me know and I will try and help.

My First Story Published in Woman's Weeky

I'm sorry if  this post is a little excitable but I have just received my complimentary copy of Woman's Weekly with my story 'Too Much to Lose' in it. It is my first story with them and once again I am sharing the pages with Teresa Ashby - we must stop meeting like this Teresa!

What with this, my two stories in this month's Fiction feast and another sale, I am having a really good week after a fallow period. Writing really is a roller coaster ride.

In a couple of days I shall be posting my useful writing resource. It is for everyone to share. It took a while to work out how to get it on the blog so it could be downloaded but I think we've managed it now.